Brookfield wolf killed after visitor is attacked

A northern gray wolf was shot to death at Brookfield Zoo after it seized the arm of a woman who jumped a fence to reach into its cage, the first time in the zoo's 69-year history that an animal attacked a visitor, zoo officials said Thursday.

Cinnamon Bear, an 11-year-old wolf born and raised at the zoo, was shot once in the chest Wednesday by a zoo police officer after the 100-pound animal clamped down on the woman's arm--and refused to let go--when she apparently tried to pet him.

The animal was the last of the zoo's pack of northern gray wolves, dating to the mid-1950s, and was the only wolf on display at Brookfield Zoo, once a premier center for wolf research.

The unaccompanied woman, identified only as 40 to 50 years old, apparently hopped a 3 1/2-foot fence and reached through a second 10-foot chain-link fence to touch the wolf, who was in a favorite sleeping corner of the outdoor pen, officials said Thursday.

The wolf "had grabbed her arm and was tugging," said Stuart D. Strahl, the zoo's new director.

The incident took place about 1 p.m. in the zoo's remote northwest corner, on a cold and blustery day when total attendance was only about 1,100, said spokeswoman Sondra Katzen, who would not identify the woman. No other visitors saw the attack, she said.

A zoo photographer driving a golf cart along a nearby access road heard the woman screaming, hurried to the scene and called police, officials said.

A veteran officer arrived within two minutes and quickly determined that it would take too long to tranquilize the animal, Strahl said. The wolf would not release the woman's arm, so the officer drew his .45-caliber pistol and fired point-blank. The zoo maintains its own force of 15 deputized police officers and emergency personnel.

The woman was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in nearby Maywood for treatment of her injured forearm. Hospital officials would not release information about the woman, but Brookfield Zoo Police Chief George Hull said her injuries were similar to a severe dog bite.

"You can imagine a dog bite," Hull said. "This was a wolf bite."

Strahl said zoo staffers remained in shock Thursday.

"I've been working in zoos since I was a kid and I've never seen anything like this," he said. "We've never had a real attack at all. It's also rare that anyone would put their arm in a cage, much less that of a carnivore."

Cinnamon Bear had been moved to the conservation barn in the zoo's northwest corner, just south of 31st Street, a year ago when work began on a new Wolf Woods habitat. A group of five Mexican gray wolves, now in quarantine, will move into the exhibit in June.

Officials had planned to leave Cinnamon Bear in his pen at the park's edge for the rest of his life, said Ann Petric, the zoo's curator of mammals. His last living brother died two years ago, and he had at most only a few years left to live. Wolves in captivity can live up to 15 years, while wild wolves typically live 6 to 8 years.

"This is a rare thing. It is really an unfortunate incident all around," said Jane Ballentine, spokeswoman for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association. "Wolves being what wolves are, they are generally skittish. The wolf was probably startled and surprised and was defending his territory from this `intruder.'"

Though Brookfield Zoo has not had previous animal attacks, it has had its share of close encounters.

In August 1996, a female gorilla rescued a 3-year-old boy who fell into the ape pit at the zoo's Tropic World Asia exhibit. In 1969, a group of polar bears escaped from their pen across a flooded moat and headed straight for a nearby marshmallow stand. The bears were quickly rounded up and returned to their enclosure.

In Wednesday's attack, it would have been very difficult for zoo officials to persuade Cinnamon Bear to let go, said Rolf Peterson, an expert on wolf behavior who has studied wolves at Brookfield Zoo. He said wolves' jaws don't lock, but they have an instinct to hang on.

"Wolves are not built to let go of things they want to hang on to. A person cannot pull the jaws of a wolf apart. You are not going to be too successful beating it over the head," said Peterson, a professor of wildlife biology at Michigan Technological University in Houghton.

Brookfield Zoo, under former director George Rabb and his wife, Mary, became a leading research center in the 1960s and 1970s for studying wolves and their behaviors.

"They were one of the pioneers of wolf research in this country. They discovered the mating strategies in wolves," said Erich Klinghammer, director of the Wolf Park near Lafayette, Ind., where some of Cinnamon Bear's descendants live.

"They did some of the original work on wolf social behavior and, until this day, it is considered keynote work," said Susan Lindsey, director of the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center, a wolf conservation, reproduction and research center in Missouri where Brookfield Zoo obtained its pack of Mexican wolves last month.

Lindsey said that Cinnamon Bear's age may have contributed to the way he reacted to a stranger's arm.

"Old animals, just like old people, don't have all their faculties. There is the likelihood that it couldn't see or hear or smell anymore," she said. "Any of those things would cause the animal to be startled. I assume that it has never been touched like that."